Livin' on the road, riding the railroads you're free, but it ain't pretty - life can be x-rated

Seasick Steve is in his 70s, he used to live rough and hop trains across America, and he’s a wizard on the guitar. We think that qualifies him to sing the blues. Along with his band, the Level Devils, he appears on the House Of The Rising Rat Vol 1 compilation, and his own album, Doghouse Blues, is also out now. We called him in his adopted home country of Norway to talk about the hobo life, Kurt Cobain, and working the carnivals.

You became homeless at 14. That must have been terrifying.

It was more terrifying to stay at home. When you’re a kid, you just go do things. Not much thinking about it. I knew a bit about riding trains, bums and hobos would come to the house, told me about how to do it. So when it got real bad at my home, I took off. I wished I was at school. Going to dances, cruising, going to the drive-in. But that wasn’t my lot. I followed the work. I worked in carnivals, cos they moved a lot. You can hide out in the carnivals, unfortunately there are a lot of other people hiding out. My job was setting up the bumper cars. Meeting girls was the best thing, they love the carnival people, I don’t know why. And I’d do farmwork here and there. Soya beans and corn in the Midwest, apples in Washington, go down to California to do tomatoes and lettuce. I’d play on the streets in each city, do a little song and dance. Anything to attract a little attention on a street corner, y’know? It was almost like a little vaudeville show goin’ on. It’s still like that in my brain.
You were on the outside of the American Dream,

looking in. Were there any positive sides to that life?

Sometimes, you’d be out on a summer night, riding on top of a train, and you’d be free. Making
a camp outside of a town, sitting around bullshitting. And I learned a lot. If the whole thing fell down now, I could go out and live. I could get out to San Francisco with no money. Find food. Cook food. But it was pretty hard. When you’ve got nowhere to live, come wintertime. I usually give people the G-rated version. The X-rated ain’t so pretty.

I guess most of the people you were on the road with aren’t around now.

I met up with someone about 15 years ago, but it was kind of depressing. His life didn’t turn out so good. I’m lucky, music got me out of this. Pretty much all the other boys I was on the road with are dead or in jail.

How did you get off the road?

It was a slow thing. Back in the 60s people started asking me to play. The more I played, the less I wanted to live like a bum. In the early 70s I went to Europe. Wandered around playing. But then I didn’t feel like a bum, I felt like a bohemian! And I got pulled into the world again. Got married, had kids, grandkids, life turned out pretty good.

You’re kind of like Forrest Gump – you’ve always been around in the right musical place at the right time. San Francisco in the 60s, you worked with the Beach Boys, lived below Kurt Cobain in Olympia…

Actually, that’s true. Hitting places by accident. As far as the Beach Boys goes, it was just a job. Just to make money. I don’t like to talk about that stuff too much, because then all people want to talk about is that! It distracts. I liked living in Olympia, though. There was a whole scene. I had a studio there. Producing bands. We moved to that town blind, the second night we were there I decided to go to this place called The Surf Club, and this Nirvana band were playing. Ha ha. I thought, wow, these guys rock! I just fell into this place.

You toured as a member of Modest Mouse.

It was a little weird. I’d never toured like that. Nowhere to stay, sleeping on floors, in someone’s backyard. These guys are 18 or 19, I was like their grandfather. I remember sleeping out one summer night in someone’s backyard with Isaac in Pittsburgh, and thinking it was like being a bum. I was too old to tour like that, really. I like to stay in a hotel now – I paid my dues already. They slept on the ground for a few weeks, I did it for 15 years!

It must take it out of you, putting on a show like you do.

No way, man! If an audience is good, you get all this energy back, y’know? I like that part. The part I don’t like is travelling to play. Ain’t no energy you’re getting back from that.

You’ve probably done enough travelling.

Yeah, but I’m still getting out and playing. I’m like a Pied Piper in a way, there are a lot of young people, they think blues is really boring. That white, middle-class-fat-boy-with-a-ponytail blues. Bar band. That’s what the blues has become. What I do is a little more primitive.

How do you describe what you do?

Blues has a bad connotation, so I don’t want to put the young people off too much. Some young people are getting into the more raw thing though. Them Black Keys boys, even the White Stripes kids. They put an old Son House song on their record, and people look into that. They going down to the delta and digging deep, and putting it with what they do. That’s what is gonna stop this getting boring. Jon Spencer. That’s kind of what got me playing again, doing shows with him and RL Burnside to all these punk-rock kids. It’s a shame more young black kids haven’t got into it. A few hip-hop kids have picked it up.

You seem to have played with a lot of people over the years.

Yeah, but I don’t care about those old people. That’s the other thing that’s wrong with the blues, they just want to know who you’ve played with. It’s like being in some dusty library where people want to make sure the book is on the right shelf. Well, this book ain’t on the right shelf.